Friday, July 15, 2011

The Joy in A Sprinkler Park

Maybe it is because I have once again had a health related rock you to the core thump on the head about how precious life really is, but I am thoroughly enjoying each and every minute with the girls this summer. Nothing else matters to me, I'm healthy and will consider the oddest and extreme surgery options to keep myself that way. I've become fixated on the girls' imaginary weddings sometime in the future, as in I will be present at those events. I have cake ideas for high school graduation parties. I look at their little friends as they visit the house and wonder what major they will choose in college. To me, these are fascinating details.

I guess you could says I'm in an odd place, completely healthy and yet seeing doctors and surgeons by the arm load, paying buckets of money for tests that I question are even necessary, but these same doctors seem to revel in the results. I've completely changed my diet to cancer and tumor prevention. There is no cheesecake this summer. I am shockingly happy to do it. I'm now viewing surgery options to remain healthy in degrees of severity, laproscopy, no big deal, recovery time only 1 week. Mastectomies with 6-9 months of follow up before it is all complete, we can leave that at "bigger deal". Eight weeks ago, any surgery would have been out of the question. Now, everything is on the table. But all of this is out there, in the future, not for today.

Today, I am giddy at the prospect of a day at the free sprinkler park toting peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the girls, and a luke warm salad for me. The girls play carefree in the water and climb a spider web of rope. I am reminded that this is how their lives should be. This is how OUR lives should be.

The girls are old enough not to need me hovering at the park. They run off and know how far they can go. It leaves me time with a camera in hand, and time to think. I'm left keeping an eye on their movement from activity to activity. I'm left sitting alone a few feet from other families. I have to endure their verbose and too loud conversations. They all seem so boring to me, they appear not to have a care in the world unless you count how many veggies little Ethan will eat. These other mother's seem completely foreign, it is if I'm now an alien observing a suburban free water park and it's normal human inhabitants.

As I tune out the other families, I can see the girls as other people often see them. They are absolutely gorgeous in every way. They are beautiful in that they share sandwiches without fighting, They are amazingly strong, climbing all that rope. They let simple water spouting up from the ground entertain them for hours. They adore the fact that they have matching pink crocs.

I love all these things about them. They are the world to me. And for right now, we have the sprinkler park
And this is why it's shaping up to be a great summer.